KALAMAZOO -- Kalamazoo County school superintendents said Monday the renewal of a countywide school tax is "critical" in avoiding significant cutbacks in educational services.

"Passage is critical to all nine districts," Doug Knobloch, superintendent of Schoolcraft Community Schools, said in a meeting between the county superintendents and Kalamazoo Gazette editors and staff. "This money is very, very important to us.

"The idea that we can continue with things are now required (under the state's new graduation requirements) without reducing programs in some other areas, it can't be done" without adequate funding, he said.

The 1.5-mill tax request is on the May 6 ballot in nine school districts: Kalamazoo, Portage, Climax-Scotts, Comstock, Galesburg-Augusta, Gull Lake, Parchment, Schoolcraft and Vicksburg. The districts three years ago sought voter approval of the tax because of lagging revenues from the state.

The levy costs the owner of a house with a market value of $120,000 about $90 a year. The $11 million in revenue is divided among schools based on enrollment, with each district getting about $335 per student. The districts can use the money however they choose.

Monday night, at a voters forum sponsored by the Metropolitan Kalamazoo Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the spokesman for the Kalamazoo County Taxpayers Association presented the argument against the tax request.

Ray Wilson said that school officials "were not being truthful" in suggesting three years ago that they would not seek renewal of the levy. "Untruthfulness should not be rewarded," he said.

He also said that many Michigan residents are seeing their income stagnant or decrease, and suggested that schools could cut teacher pay and benefits if they need to tighten their belts. "Nothing against teachers, but who should be making the sacrifice -- teachers or those people struggling to make ends meet?" Wilson said.

He called the tax a "reverse Robin Hood. It takes money from the less fortunate and gives it to public school employees."

Tim Bartik, an economist and member of the Kalamazoo school board, also spoke at the forum. Countering Wilson's stance, Bartik said that failing to renew the school tax would hurt the local economy because school quality is linked to housing values and business recruiting and retention.

"Kalamazoo is trying to compete in a glocal economy by being the Education Community," Bartik said. "How can you be the Educational Community if you can't funding? You can't."

At the Gazette meeting with superintendents, Geoffrey Balkam, head of Climax-Scotts Community Schools, said that millage is "aboslutely critical" for his system.

"Our district is on the ropes," he said.

Kalamazoo Superintendent Michael Rice said that his district has been helped by an enrollment spike related to The Kalamazoo Promise. But in the seven years before The Promise, he said, Kalamazoo cut $19 million from its budget and in the past two years, it was restored only $2 million.

Only two of his elementary schools have librarians, he said, and class sizes are large in upper elementary and secondary grades.

"We're stretched thin," Rice said. "We're expected to do better and more and we will, but do better and more with less money is quite a trick.

"I just don't know that taking cuts out of the hides of children is the best way to fund an improved society."